NEW YORK — New York City police have a person in custody who is suspected to have set a woman on fire in the subway early Sunday and then watched from a bench as she became engulfed in flames and died.
Surveillance video showed the man calmly approach the woman, who was sitting motionless and may have been sleeping, while aboard a stationary F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station and then set her on fire.
Her clothing “became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” said New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, describing the case as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being.”
The man then sat on a nearby bench outside the train car and watched as officers and a transit worker extinguished the flames. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
The man was arrested hours later while riding on the same subway line.
The suspect and victim did not appear to know each other and did not interact before the incident, police said.
Police have the man in custody but have not yet released his identity. The woman’s name has not yet been released.
The man had not been charged in the death Monday afternoon, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jeff Carter said he is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally after he had been previously removed in 2018.
It is unclear when and where he reentered the U.S. Federal immigration officials will issue a detainer for him once he is charged to transfer him into federal custody, Carter said. Federal immigration officials will typically issue a detainer request to ask an agency to hold a person until he or she can be taken into immigration custody, rather than having the person released back into public.
Authorities had circulated images of the man from surveillance cameras and police body camera videos taken at the crime scene. A group of high school students tipped off police to the man’s presence on a train later Sunday, and he was taken into custody.
He was wearing the same clothes and had a lighter in his pocket when he apprehended, police said.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez released a statement that said “we will do everything in our power to ensure accountability in this case.”
Police patrol the New York City subways, and there are a vast network of cameras in stations and in all subway cars.
But the sheer size of the subway system — 472 stations with multiple entry points and millions of riders each day — make policing the transit system a logistical nightmare.
In Sunday’s incident, officers were at the station but were patrolling a different subway platform. They responded after seeing and smelling smoke coming from the fire.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this year directed members of the state’s National Guard to assist with random bag checks at certain stations.
Violent incidents in the subway often put people on edge, in part because many New Yorkers take the train multiple times a day and often have their own experiences with uncomfortable interactions in the system.
Broadly, crime is down in the city transit system this year compared to the same time period in 2023. Data compiled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show a 6% decline in what the agency calls major felonies between January and November of this year and 2023.
At the same time, murders in the transit system are up, with nine killings this year through November compared to five in the same time period last year.
High-profile incidents on the train, such as the case of Daniel Penny, a military veteran who choked an agitated New York subway rider and was acquitted of homicide this month, often attract national attention and further unnerve passengers.